Forgotten Dairies
Retelling The Story Of Patience Ibrahim -By Segun Ogunlade
As no man or woman can conveniently tell the number of men, women, and children that have been killed by Book Haram since inception, so also can no man tell the number of men, women,
Long before the unfortunate abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok and Dapchi, kidnapping has been one of the operational strategies of this sect. That is surely not going to stop anytime soon except for a kind of divine intervention.
The United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) in a statement released on the eve of the fourth year anniversary of the kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls from Federal Government Girl’s College in Chibok, Borno state, published on Sahara Reporters, said that at least 2,295 teachers had been killed in the North-East since the insurgency started in 2009. The statement went on to say more than 1,000 children had been kidnapped and 1,400 schools destroyed by the terrorists in the region since 2013. Women and children continue to come under attack at a shocking scale, being targeted and exposed to brutal violence at home, market, school, and public places.
One of such victims of the unscrupulous activities of Boko Haram and whose story has not been heard by many is Patience Ibrahim. Patience was a young woman who had just conceived for her husband when Boko Haram ransacked her village in the summer of 2014. On the night of her abduction, many women were also kidnapped and many men were slaughtered for no just cause.
In a book she co-authored with an American journalist, Andrea C. Hoffmann titled: ‘A Gift From Darkness: How I Escaped With My Daughter from Boko Haram,’ she narrated her ordeal in the hands of the terrorist group. In the book, she reported of how women who were suspected to be carrying Christian babies were being treated. She said she once saw a Boko Haram soldier threw one of those pregnant women to the ground, cut the fetus out with a machete and left the woman to bleed to death.
Before her abduction from Gwoza village, Borno state, in July 2014, Patience had been married twice – sold by her father both times first for a cow and then a goat. She was an unlucky woman in marriage as her first husband was killed in 2013 by the same sect during an infamous visit to Gwoza village. Patience managed to escape unhurt. However, when they visited to unleash mayhem again in 2014, she was rounded up with some other women from the village to a Boko Haram encampment, many kilometers away from her home.
Patience didn’t witness the firsthand gruesomeness of this evil sect until some days later when she was moved to a new camp. She nearly bit a human flesh taking it for an animal flesh when she was stopped by another woman who pointed it out to her. The woman explained to her the ritual killings of soldiers deemed as traitors, and were not tried in any court of justice before being accused of deliberately missing their targets in battle. Patience watched with horror one night as a soldier hacked another to death with a machete and his dead body taken to a kitchen where it was further hacked to pieces. More of this gory sight followed one another for her in the days that followed, according to her report.
She was re-united with her husband who was amazingly still alive months after. This was when she escaped with a soldier named Ibrahim who himself had been forced to change his religion, alongside some other women from neighbouring communities. This time, Gwoza had again been attacked and these escapees met with locals including her husband who were streaming out of the village into the nearby mountains where they thought they could be safe from attack. However, Patience’s freedom and that of others were short-lived as they all walked into a net that had been strung through the trees by Boko Haram soldiers, trapping them again.
Patience was unfortunately separated from her husband again as they were taken to different camps. According to her reports, men would come to the women’s camp and select women to marry, women that are sometimes about 12 years old! The marriage would be performed by an imam under the auspices of Muslim law by an Imam. Having paid the women some token as dowry before marriage, the soldiers could have sex with their chosen women under the same law that joined them together as man and wife!
She refused to marry a soldier named Muhammadu who would later help her to escape many days later whilst the Boko Haram soldiers were praying. This time that she escaped, her belly was just growing, one of the factors that had moved Muhammadu to help her escape. This was around October 2014. Her second daring escape attempt with other women saw them walked into a refugee camp near the Nigerian borders with Cameroon. Patience was again re-united with her husband. She was here for some few months as her pregnancy progressed. Again, the militants came visiting late one night. Her husband ran away leaving his heavily pregnant wife with the instruction that she takes care of their child. By the time she woke up the following morning having hid herself under a thick velvet, she was confronted with the news of her husband’s death having been decapitated by the militants. In grief, she went into labour and later delivered a baby girl alone in the wilderness and named her GIFT upon her first cry.
She began walking again in terrible pain from the birth, covered in blood and filth from her ordeal. She ran into a group of female survivors who insisted that she travel with them. After hours of walking, they ran into a checkpoint manned by Nigerian soldiers. She and her baby were taken in by the soldiers who instructed their wives to take care of her and her baby. After some weeks of recovery, she was given a bus ticket to Maiduguri in the hope of re-uniting with any of her relations that might still be alive. Her sister was still alive but unable to take her in. She thus found her way to a nearby church.
As at the time her story was published, Patience Ibrahim is still living in the church compound. She had taken a sewing class in order to earn some money. Andrea C. Hoffmann through whom she told her story by the aid of a translator said Patience Ibrahim is fond of the book, always taking it about and posing for photographs with it. Although she can’t read her own story because she was not privileged to be educated in the white men’s language, Patience understands that telling her story was an important act.
These stories of survival are many. Many of the people that survived several attacks by Boko Haram the massacre are now either resident in Maiduguri or in a new settlement known in Kanuri as Bulabulin Bolibe, which can be translated to mean a new town. The latter harbours many untold stories of families where at least one relative had gone missing and remain unaccounted for till date. Many of them have no hope of ever regaining their freedom and reuniting with their families. The recent case of Leah Shaibu fall into this category and it is a pathetic one for the young lady whose faith is the reason she is still being kept away from her home, away from the people she loved.
While some of the people that were abducted had been freed, it would be unthinkable to say they are free from the memories of their traumatic ordeals. Even more worse is the discrimination they suffered from their people. For example, a woman who was abducted by the insurgents was pregnant upon her return home. But she was rejected by her husband because she was pregnant for an insurgent which wasn’t her fault. Also, when one of the Chibok school girls escaped by jumping off the truck that was transporting them and returned home to tell her story, the mother of her best friend see her as a bad friend because she didn’t escape with her daughter. It’s because of the discrimination they suffered from members of their community that made one the freed women said she prefers the Boko Haram camp to her community because she was being looked after by the insurgents and treated with disdain by her own community.
The society is guilty of many things when it comes to victims of conflict such as the one against Boko Haram. Discriminating against someone for being a victim of what she couldn’t control and stigmatising them make the post-war experience of the victims terrible still. Yet, many women and children continue to be victims of the insurgency. Those who are internally displaced and living in camps meant for them are not taken care of. Many of the women are raped and food items meant for them are sometimes diverted by those in charge of them. Many of the children are malnourished thereby susceptible to all kinds of infancy infections. The women and men in those camps live in penury and uncertain of what the future holds for them as the war against insurgency rages on with victims being recorded among the civilians and military alike.
Those of us who have neither been victim of Boko Haram nor activities of Fulani herdsmen and banditry don’t know what freedom we have. The war against insurgency is far from being over. Now that other groups such as Fulani herdsmen and members of armed bandit are unleashing mayhem in many parts of the country, insecurity in the country is now a reality. There are many problems facing the country now. The military is being overwhelmed and many citizens are falling below the poverty line on a daily. Millions of children are out of school and the county’s population is growing unchecked. Foreigners from neighbouring countries are trooping in through the porous borders while corruption among the ruling elites is depriving the country of many basic things of life that citizens enjoy in other climes. Nigeria has never been this troubled since the days of its beginnings during the colonial era. Yet, solutions to the myriad of problems facing us as a nation seem to be elusive. Geometric retrogression is what we now deal with as many things that were good before have turned bad from economy to education, governance, lifestyle, health, and even relationship between people. Unfortunately, we are used to a lot of horrible things that there are minimal efforts to change the anomalies that characterise our existence as Nigerians. It seems everyone of us are specially designed to cope with a mediocre style of governance and lifestyle.
For those of us that are enjoying freedom from insurgency and unscrupulous attack, we should continue to pray for better government intervention in the affairs of the internally displaced persons whilst also condemning discrimination of victims who are returnees from Boko Haram camp.
May God bless Nigeria.
Segun Ogunlade writes from University of Ibadan, Ibadan. He is a final year student of the department of Religious Studies. He could be reached via email at ogunlade02@gmail.com or his phone number +2348085851773.
